ARAXA Biosciences was founded as a spin-off company from Europe’s most prestigious life science research and instrumentation institute, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg and its technology transfer arm EMBLEM Technology Transfer GmbH (EMBLEM).
ARAXA aims to set new standards for the development of antibody-based therapeutics and diagnostics drug conjugates
For certain diseases, no potent cure and/or diagnostics exists. Antibodies could help but often require advanced engineering. Most common methods for production of protein-small molecule conjugates suffer from drawbacks such as bulky modifications, restriction of the modification site, complex and inefficient procedures, or batch-to-batch variety. ARAXA’s proprietary protein engineering platform overcomes these limitations by combining the concepts of genetic code expansion and bioorthogonal click chemistry. The technology allows labelling of antibodies with any probe including cytotoxic drugs and radioisotopes in an ultrafast as well as quantitative manner – even inside cells and in the future also in patients. This paves new ways for the development of highly specific antibody-drug conjugates or -radioisotope analogs.
ARAXA will operate as a research and development-focused antibody engineering service provider as well as consider to develop a proprietary pharmaceuticals pipeline.